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Sierra Design Engineering, Mount Aukum, California; BUB Enterprises, Grass Valley, California; and ALGOR, Inc., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
FEA software was used to analyze key components of a racing streamliner.
A streamliner motorcycle designed and built by Sierra Design Engineering and BUB Enterprises achieved a new world-record speed of 350.884 miles per hour last year at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. In 1989, the original engine and transmission were designed by Joe Harralson of Sierra Design Engineering, with the rest of the streamliner being designed and built by BUB Enterprises.

NextEngine, Santa Monica, CA, offers the Desktop 3D Scanner, a full-color multi-laser scanner that scans complex shapes for CAD and 3D design applications on the desktop. About the size of a cereal box, the scanner connects directly to a PC via USB 2.0. It operates with proprietary MultiStripe Laser Triangulation (MLT) technology that features twin arrays of four Class 1M 10-mW solid-state lasers with custom optics at a 650-nm wavelength. The scanner also features twin 3-megapixel CMOS RGB image sensors, optically synchronous RGB color texture capture, and built-in spatially diverse white-light texture illuminators. Full-color photo data is captured for each surface point, and there is no preset limit for the size of objects to be scanned. Objects larger than 5.1 x 3.8" in macro mode and 13.5 x 10.1" in wide mode can be composite-captured with supplied ScanStudio(tm) software. The unit has throughput of 50,000 processed points per second, and comes with an AutoPositioner(tm) to capture multiple surfaces of objects, and a PartGripper(tm) to secure objects during scanning.
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NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA
Dr. Karen JacksonIn a crash, keeping the occupants alive and uninjured is paramount. In order to study the dynamics of an impact, military and general aviation aircraft, like cars, must be tested for their ability to keep their riders safe. A part of Structural Dynamics Branch in the Research and Technology Directorate at NASA Langley, the Landing and Impact Research Facility (LandIR) tests aircraft by crashing them. Dr. Karen Jackson is part of the research team.

Cycle lives of these cathodes exceed those of LiCoO2 and LiMn2O4 cathodes.
MoO3 has shown promise as a cathode material that can extend the upper limit of operating temperature of rechargeable lithium thin-film electrochemical cells. Cells of this type are undergoing development for use as energy sources in cellular telephones, wireless medical sensors, and other, similarly sized portable electronic products. The LiCoO2 and LiMn2O4 cathodes heretofore used in these cells exhibit outstanding cycle lives (of the order of hundreds of thousands of cycles) at room temperature, but operation at higher temperatures reduces their cycle lives substantially: for example, at a temperature of 150 °C, cells containing LiCoO2 cathodes lose half their capacities in 100 charge/discharge cycles.

Properties can be tailored through a choice of starting alkoxysilane and diamine ingredients.
Ion-conducting polymers that are hybrids of organic and inorganic moieties and that are suitable for forming into solidelectrolyte membranes have been invented in an effort to improve upon the polymeric materials that have been used previously for such membranes. Examples of the prior materials include perfluorosulfonic acid-based formulations, polybenzimidazoles, sulfonated polyetherketone, sulfonated naphthalenic polyimides, and polyethylene oxide (PEO)-based formulations. Relative to the prior materials, the polymers of the present invention offer greater dimensional stability, greater ease of formation into mechanically resilient films, and acceptably high ionic conductivities over wider temperature ranges. Devices in which films made of these ion-conducting organic/ inorganic polymers could be used include fuel cells, lithium batteries, chemical sensors, electrochemical capacitors, electrochromic windows and display devices, and analog memory devices.

This inorganic additive appears to act as a superior SEI promoter.
Lithium dinitramide, LiN(NO2)2 has shown promise as an additive to nonaqueous electrolytes in rechargeable and non-rechargeable lithium-ion-based electrochemical power cells. Such non-aqueous electrolytes consist of lithium salts dissolved in mixtures of organic ethers, esters, carbonates, or acetals. The benefits of adding lithium dinitramide (which is also a lithium salt) include lower irreversible loss of capacity on the first charge/discharge cycle, higher cycle life, lower self-discharge, greater flexibility in selection of electrolyte solvents, and greater charge capacity.

Fracture strength of a part can be predicted as one statistical distribution.
A methodology has been devised for accounting for uncertainties in the strengths of silicon carbide structural components of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). The methodology enables prediction of the probabilistic strengths of complexly shaped MEMS parts using data from tests of simple specimens. This methodology is intended to serve as a part of a rational basis for designing SiC MEMS, supplementing methodologies that have been borrowed from the art of designing macroscopic brittle material structures.

Question of the Week

This week's Question: A recent study created by the Arizona-based Paragon Space Development Corporation says its life support system could help humans survive on Mars. The proposed Environmental Control and Life Support System, the company says,...